Our first project for humanities are about the questions:Where do we belong?What makes us, us?What are our interests.How important is it to belong?​Who are we?

Here is the book my class read.

​It's about this Indian named, Junior, and he's been in the reservation for his whole life. He wants a change so he moves to a school full of white people, outside the rez. As the school year passes by, he finds out what tribes he belongs to.

First 2 days of school I was absent.

I was in Japan visiting my family. So I missed the House on Mango Street ​performance with the team. I visited: Tokyo, Yokohama, Kamakura, and where my family lived, Chigasaki.

This is the food court in Terrace Mall in Japan

These two pictures are from the city my family lives in, Chigasaki.

The picture on the left is taken at Tokyo.

The picture on the right was taken at Akihabara.

Dialogical Interview w/ Diego

Notes from 8/27

Here are the notes I took when I interviewed Diego. The questions I asked him were:

​Who has impacted your life? How?

What is a place that is important to you? Why?

​What's a memorable moment you had and why is it memorable?

We talked to each other for 40 minutes, and I got to know him a lot better than before. We then used those notes to make a poem for each other.

Poem to Diego

Here is the link to my first draft of the poem I wrote about Diego. Click here. This is a link to my 2nd draft. Instead of highlighting each others poems, we just switched our computers and added more things to it. Click here.The link I added here is for the Specificity self critique process we did. It is about putting lines from our poem and see how specific the lines are towards our interviewee. Click here.

Critique with 8th Graders

​We had a critique session with the 8th graders from the Staff & Holmes team from the middle school. My partners name was Deandre, and he told me to make it more descriptive and add more detail to my poem. He didn't have an essay so I tried to help him start it off.​​

Self Portrait

This is my self-portrait. I chose this spot because I believe in myself to be the best and also successful.

Article of "belongings"

The article I read is called, "This is how you become a white supremacist." It is about this man that spent 7 years in the white supremacist group hating everything. He then changed because of the people that didn't lower down to his level. Click here to read the article.

Performance Piece

I decided to present what I wrote, the poem about Diego. To see my script, click here. I just added actions to do when I speak my lines, so there's more emotion and feeling added.

This is a picture of me presenting my poem for exhibition night.

The finale of our exhibition. THE NEW GENERATION

Reflection

​1. How would you answer this project’s essential question, “what tribes do you belong to?”. Has this answer changed since the beginning of the year?We all belong to some tribe, at least one. The tribes I belong to are: independent people, outgoing people, and funny people. Those tribes have never changed for me my whole life. Ever since I was a child, I belonged to those tribes.

2. What did you learn about “writing for a client” that you want to remember in your next project?I have learned to ask as much questions you can, even if they're really pointless because there more questions you ask, the more you know.

3. What did you learn about descriptive writing that you want to remember about your next project?I want to be as descriptive as possible, always. So my audience can visualize my writing clearly and no missing holes. You have to use the 5 senses to be descriptive: touch, smell, taste, hear, sight. If you use all the senses, it will be really descriptive and the audience can imagine what you're writing about.

4. What did you learn about collaboration that you want to remember in your next project?I didn't work in a group, I presented alone. The only person I worked with was with Diego; and that was to make the poem. But to be collaborative, you have to be efficient and have really good communication.

5. What’s one moment from this project that you want to remember?A moment that I want to remember is when i presented my poem at exhibition night. I felt really anxious to present. When I went up to present, I always remembered to stay calm so the audience can understand my poem. I kept a smile on my face, and took breaths between my lines. Enunciated my words. When I was done presenting, everyone was clapping and I felt really good in myself.